


Far away in my well-lit door

by morphogenesis



Category: Zero Escape (Video Games)
Genre: F/M, Falling In Love, Food, Mild Sexual Content, Motherhood, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-08
Updated: 2019-09-08
Packaged: 2020-10-12 16:28:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20567387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morphogenesis/pseuds/morphogenesis
Summary: Lotus, Seven, and food, drink, and learning to be merry again.





	Far away in my well-lit door

**Author's Note:**

  * For [echoslam](https://archiveofourown.org/users/echoslam/gifts).

> Looooved your prompts and hope you like this! Title from "You Can Call Me Al" by Paul Simon.

"And I'm supposed to believe that?!"

Seven winces and people at the bar look but Hazuki doesn't care. "I trust my source--"

"Why should I care if those two are working on a project? I have a life too! They belong in jail!" The purpose of the Second Nonary Game has just been explained to her as well as Seven understands it but she doesn't care that they had some goal then and she doesn't care what they’re doing now. She wants to help SOIS with their search for them.

"It's to stop the people who helped with the first game. So please. Don't cooperate right now."

She slaps him and leaves, but she leaves SOIS messages unanswered in the future.

**

One year later, Seven shows up at her door with crepes and news. “Hi--”

"Why should I let you in?" Hazuki cuts him off. She hasn't heard a word since she left him in that bar after he dropped in again a year ago. She's been fine and is more surprised to see him than anything, but if she can give him a hard time she will.

"They're peach and the caramel is getting hard." That works. His bulk fills the door frame when he steps inside. "How ya been Kashiwabara?"

"Same as ever, as you would know. If you know where I live you know how I've been." She's not naive enough to think she's invisible on the grid but after her girls came home she made every effort to become so. Not enough for Zero to miss her. Not enough for Seven. She wonders when she’s gonna know his name. 

"You're sharp," he says like that’s a problem, and shakes his hand in an exaggerated pantomime of being pricked. "Ouch." Has he been replaced with Junpei? "Do you want to share the food or not?"

"Sit down," she says and almost winces at how his bulk warps her dining chair. She keeps a neat and well-coordinated home for herself and Seven ruining that would drive her insane. Less insane than she’s been with work and the uncertainty of the future after last year when he slipped up and told her about the allegedly impending end of the world.

"We're gonna be fine!" Seven says as he fights to scoop ice cream onto her china plates. He's grabbed soup plates, she notices, clearly a man who's never had a reason to go out in his life. Of course, judging by his clean but wrinkled dress shirt. He used to be a detective, for God’s sake, he knows how to present himself. "My very good inside source says they stopped the end of the world."

"For now." She folds her arms and looks up at the ceiling. "How am I supposed to feel about that?"

"Uh, happy?"

"No, I'm relieved but... there's always gonna be another reason to visit with beer instead of ice cream." She glances at him. "Can you come just because you want to next time?"

He smiles.

**

"It's breakfast for dinner, you never heard of it?" she protests when he knocks her cooking chops.

"I think eggs are so easy college kids could make 'em and a lady doesn't know how to --" He stops when she threatens him with the spatula. "So how about those twins huh?"

She misses when he had spunk and fought her harder. Now he seems so eager to please her instead. She’s gotta up her game. "Brilliant as always." He's hit her weak point as if knowing she could brag about the girls all day long. So she does and he listens attentively and asks questions that show he pays attention when she talks about them. 

Point: Seven.

**

They get drinks again. Nobody stares this time. Seven looks surprised when he laughs at her jokes. He grows pensive throughout the night and keeps her talking through last call. When she goes to leave he touches her arm and says, "Should I have hung out longer with you? Back then?"

‘Should he have?,’ she considers."No," Hazuki says. "This is fine." She's not lying or trying to hurt him, although she’s unsatisfied with her own answer. She doesn’t yet know what it should be.

**

"When are we gonna see your boyfriend again?" Ennea has always been more like her father so that comes out more teasing than she must mean it (Hazuki hopes).

She's the mom and too old to play into schoolgirl teasing so she replies, "When I meet yours."

"Mom! Come on, he's nice!" When they saw him, Nona remembered him almost immediately and gave him a big hug, trembling and silently crying and he patted her head and said she was tough so please don't cry, she'd make her mom sad. Behind her Ennea had touched her shoulder and said, "C'mon sis you're embarrassing us," tenderly. 

"Well don't let that one get away," Ennea teases and Hazuki reminds her rent and utilities are far more expensive than what Mom asks for--a clean room, a job, and a tiny percentage of her paycheck.

"Can you believe she said that?" Hazuki jokes later and Seven grimaces and asks why Ennea loves horror stories. 

**

On another night, Hazuki looks at Seven across the sidewalk outside of the restaurant and notices he looks troubled again. "Why not just enjoy right now? Why does it matter what could've happened?" she asks what he means when he brings it up again. "It didn't. There's only right now." She used to tell herself that all the time when she thought about the girls and what she could've done or what might've happened. 

"I don't know," he admits. "Can't help but feel like there's a window that closed somewhere along the way."

She rolls her eyes and closes the distance. "There are dozens of windows on a passenger ship," and she kisses him to shut him up.

**

The girls say they told her so and Hazuki shoos them out the door while Seven laughs at her. She threatens to break the record for World's Fastest Breakup. 

"Mom's got a boyfriend," the girls sing while Hazuki keeps trying to shoo them and she says, "Pack your bags."

"Move in with me," Seven offers, "we'll have more adventures than your mom does." He considers her fondly and says, "Really. She's the most boring woman in the world."

"Not in front of us," Ennea groans. 

"Seriously. Gross," Nona adds.

"Grow up, girls." She puts her hand on Seven's arm.

**

"Do you think it'll be okay?" he asks her in bed that night. 

Hazuki starts to say 'It was okay for me--' before realizing he isn't talking about sex. (She wrote him off as a brute early on but he's attentive and a quick learner. A long time ago he confessed he's been married before and his wife clearly put in a lot of instruction time.)

"I have no idea." She finds his hand in the sheets and holds it despite their obvious size difference. "I just know we have to try." She wants a world with him, after all. He doesn’t even know what soup plates are. They have a lot more dining out to do.


End file.
